Aftermath
by Kansas42
Summary: Nick dealing with the aftermath of Grave Danger. Muy angsty.
1. Friends

so, this is lots of serious nick angst; I'm sure this is going to be a common theme for most people after the season finale, but oh well. Huge spoilers for Grave Danger, as well as The Stalker, Overload, Who are You, Boom, and pretty much everything else. Also, I broke this up in chapters because it just seemed too long to keep as one whole piece. 

I.

I've been sitting in the same place for a while now. My eyes are closed. When I open them, they stare blankly at the wall. I don't look at anything. I don't look at the gun that's in my hand. I massage the trigger with my finger, feeling its steel, its coldness. I don't want to look at it right now, so I don't. I keep my eyes closed.

This is the stage that they call 'aftermath'. Aftermath is what happens after the traumatic event. I'm not sure where the 'math' part of the word comes in. I suppose you could argue that math itself is a traumatic experience. I probably would have to, before the incident.

That's what everyone calls it, when they have to refer to it at all. To call it 'the burial' is too harsh. To call it 'the accident' would be false. To call it 'that time recently where Nick almost suffocated to death' would be too true. So we call it 'the incident' and leave it at that.

Aftermath after an incident can last a long time. It's been three months since "my incident" and the aftermath is still happening. And I'm sitting here, eyes closed, hand on my gun, trying to figure out what's the worst part of it. What's the worst thing about surviving the incident, about living after being buried alive. It's a long list.

Up there on the list is talking to my folks. I talk to them about twice a week now. Before the incident I talked to them maybe once a month or so. The conversations were always pleasant; the ones with my mother always lasted longer than the ones with my father. I wouldn't want to say my father and I were estranged from each other, but we weren't really close like we used to be either. Usually our conversations went something like, "How've you been? Life treating you well? Well, that's good. I'll talk to you next time."

After the incident my parents called about every other day. The conversations are awkward as hell. When my parents visited me in the hospital, my dad actually broke down in tears. . .something that I've seen about as many times as I've visited Egypt. . .meaning never. Now when he calls, his voice sounds harsher than normal, as if aware that he did something so unmanly in front of his own son that it eats at him inside. It probably does. Every time he says 'I love you' he sounds like he's in physical pain. Still, he makes sure to say it, maybe even as often as twice a phone call.

Mom isn't that much better. Her voice always sounds thick, as if repressing tears. She rarely represses them for the whole phone call, and she always apologies for "sounding so silly". She also tells me that she loves me and makes sure that every word in our conversation is meaningful, as if we may not ever get to talk again. When the phone call is finally over, I have a couple of ways of recuperation: booze, or a lot of Advil. Talking to my parents now always gives me a headache. It's hard knowing that every time Mom and Dad call, they're doing it to say goodbye.

II.

When I first got out of the hospital, my friends refused to let me spend a night alone in my house. Sometimes I pretended that this was silly, but mostly I didn't bother because being alone terrified me. I spent most of that time with Warrick and Greg, both stepping on each other's toes to fill the position of 'best friend'. Sara and Catherine didn't usually spend nights but they'd often be at my house until late, fixing food or straightening my already straightened house. Grissom came over once for about half an hour, and then left hurriedly, as if his shoes were on fire. I doubt that he really had anything urgent to do, but I'm not surprised that he didn't stay. Sometimes I think that he feels out of place in my home, that he wants to support me but doesn't know what to do. Other times I think he's just too busy to come by and our relationship is nothing special because it never was. When it comes to Grissom, my feelings are always conflicted, and that makes me smile a little because that means that some things never change.

III.

Sara and Greg are the easiest to be around. Right after the incident, Greg was so quiet that you almost forgot he was in the room. He'd stand there, shifting his weight around, and with his mouth sewn up shut like he was afraid that if he parted his lips to speak, something inappropriate and horrible would fall out. On the third day at the hospital, Greg finally started to speak a little and made a small joke about one of the nurses that looked like she came right out of that Jack Nicholson movie, that one about all the crazies, Nurse Ratched or something like that. Greg laughed a little at his own joke and Warrick turned to glare at him, as if laughing was something that you just didn't do after your friend had been buried alive. Greg stopped laughing immediately and turned pale and he didn't open his mouth for another two days.

When I felt a little more up to it (meaning coherent and awake and not shaking all of the time) I had the others leave so I could talk to Greg a little about it. For Greg, jokes are fun but they're also a way to deal with stress, and I got that Greg needed to let that stress out in some form or another, and I'd rather that it came out in bad jokes than beating up inoffensive walls. Greg was reluctant at first, but eventually he did begin to loosen up and start telling jokes again. They were always pretty lousy but I laughed at them anyway. Greg wasn't the only one who needed some humor in the days after the incident.

Sara doesn't make as many jokes, but she is surprisingly good at conversation and she tells me all sorts of little things that make me feel more grounded and more here. She'll talk about people at work, or how shitty the traffic is, or how many idiots blocked her way to the coffeepot that morning, and all of it makes me smile, that little life stuff. Catherine tries to do this as well, and sometimes she's successful, but other times not because it's Catherine who has to excuse herself the most often to go to the bathroom and cry. She pretends that she doesn't, of course, but her eyes are too watery and her mascara too smudged to be particularly convincing.

Warrick is around the most often, which is ironic because he's the one I have the hardest time hanging with. Once Warrick got used to the idea that it was okay to laugh after something terrible, he started making some jokes too, and his are good ones, definitely better than Greg's. I like to laugh with him and hear him talk and lose while playing on my PS2. . .I might have almost died but Warrick likes to win, and I appreciate that. I really enjoy those normal times, when Warrick doesn't act like everything must center around what happened to me, but those times don't last very long. Because after we hang out or relax or whatever, Warrick will inevitably want to talk, and when I say talk, I mean 'confess'.

They all feel bad about it, I know that they do, but Warrick feels the most guilty, and I guess I get why. If our positions had been reversed, if Warrick had gone to the garbage scene instead of me, I probably would feel the same way he does. I probably would feel like it was all my fault, like it could have been me in that box, and it should have been me in that box. I understand how Warrick feels, I really do, but every time he confesses that he is really the one to blame, I have to convince him that he's wrong and that he did nothing to be ashamed of. And it's true that he didn't do anything wrong and he has nothing to be ashamed of, but sometimes it takes a lot of effort to make him believe it, and other times I just don't feel like comforting anyone. I feel irrational and selfish and angry and I want to say, "You know what, man? I'm the one who got buried alive, okay? I'm the one who was being eaten alive while being buried alive while starving for breath while trying not to commit suicide. . .I was the one who went through all of that, and I don't feel like comforting anyone, all right? How 'bout you comfort ME this time?"

I think about saying all that and then I push it away because Warrick's only trying to help and I don't want to make things worse for him. But the thing is, that even with all the awkwardness between me and my friends, all the pain and goodbyes between me and my folks. . .all of that is bad but I don't think it's the worst part.


	2. Nightmares

IV.

The night I was rescued and admitted to the hospital, I couldn't sleep because when I did I'd have nightmares and I'd wake up screaming. It would take a while to calm me down and while I tried desperately to stop crying, Warrick would pace the halls and Catherine would put a trembling hand to her mouth to hold back a sob while trying to soothe me at the same time. Eventually, the doctors gave me a sedative and I slept for a long time, but the dreams didn't stop and somewhere, silently, I was still screaming.

One night a few weeks later, Warrick was staying at my place and I went to bed early because I was tired, something that seems to happen now a lot. When I fell asleep, I dreamed that I couldn't move, and that Grissom, Warrick, and Greg carried me to that damn glass coffin, and then they sealed me in and lowered it to the bottom of a six foot deep hole. I could move again once the coffin hit the bottom of the hole, but I couldn't break the glass and I couldn't get out. Everybody from the lab came around to stand near Grissom, and they all started saying prayers but their voices sounded dead, as if they were rehearsing lines with absolutely no emotional attachment. Sara said, "I miss you," but there was nothing behind it and Grissom said, "I thought of him like a son," but in a way that made it obvious that he was just looking for something nice to say. And then everybody picked up shovels and started hauling dirt on top of the coffin, and I screamed at them to stop but they refused to hear me, and I pleaded at them to help but Brass only said, "You're already dead, Nicky, so be quiet already." And I tried to scream that I wasn't dead, that I was alive and they shouldn't bury me, but the dirt just kept on coming, and I screamed and screamed and screamed. . .and Warrick was suddenly there, hands on my shoulders, shaking me, saying, "Nicky, Nicky, NICK!" And I woke up suddenly, aware of my bedroom and of Warrick and of not being dead.

I tried not to cry, of course, but that didn't really work, and I wasn't that surprised because the days where I could pretend that manly men like me didn't cry were long over. Any dignity I ever had was lost to me now, and I just couldn't keep the tears in, no matter how hard I tried. Warrick looked miserable and lost as he held me by the shoulders and I suppose I looked the same, gasping for breath and fighting back panic. Warrick said, "It's okay, Nicky, it's okay, now," and when I looked at him I think we both knew that he was lying.

V.

It's been three months since the incident, three months since what happened, and I've returned to work and living in my apartment alone, and my friends come by to visit but no one sleeps over anymore. My parents say their goodbyes but now only twice a week instead of every other day, and I have nightmares, but not five or six a night. Still, the nightmares are very present in my life, usually about three times a week or so, and I'm started to wonder if the nightmares will ever completely go away, if I'll ever be able to sleep without being buried again. Both Greg and Warrick ask about the dreams, and I lie and say I sleep fine, but I'm sure the circles under my eyes tell a different story. And when I wake up in the mornings screaming and I look into the mirror, I'm sure that the nightmares won't stop, that I'll be dying every night that I live.

And somehow I know that the nightmares aren't the worst part, that there are worse things about surviving and going through the aftermath.


	3. Privacy

VI.

The first night in the hospital, I was so out of it from fear and nightmares and drugs that I couldn't really ask questions or think very coherently at all, my thoughts going mostly in an endless loop and rarely connecting with anything to hold on to. The second night I was able to string thoughts together a little and finally thought to ask about how the others found me, though they were all fairly evasive and cautious with details. It wasn't until the third night that anyone admitted that they had been watching me struggling in that coffin, that they could see me choking and crying and trying my damndest not to crack. I think I said something like "Oh" when I found out and didn't say much after that. And I had even more nightmares that night than I had the night before.

Privacy has always been very important to me, and I understand enough about psychology to understand why. Ever since I was nine years old, I've tried to mold myself into something that I'm not, to show a brave face, a strong, resourceful Nick, a Nick that didn't cry and scream and convulse. I wanted the world to see a happy, go-lucky, even naïve version of me; I didn't want them to see me as damaged, as insecure, and afraid. It took me 29 years just to admit to anyone else what had happened to me when I was a kid, and that hadn't even been easy; Catherine had to practically browbeat me into saying anything at all. But when I told her about the babysitter and I said, "It's what makes a person, I guess", I at least sort of meant it. I managed to rebuild after what happened then and I moved on and I was doing okay. And then Nigel Crane came along and took all my hardworked privacy away.

Crane had holes in my ceiling, and he stayed up there in the attic watching me, watching me all the time. He watched as I ate, as I watched TV, as I showered, as I slept. He watched me when I was most vulnerable and unable to defend myself. He watched everything all the time, and after he was gone, I could still feel his eyes, watching, always watching, even after I moved to a new home. I would stay awake at night, my heart racing, and I'd have to turn on the light to make sure that there weren't holes in the ceiling, that the eyes I was imagining weren't real. I could never really relax with the feeling that someone, anyone, was watching the real me, not that brave Nick that I pretended, but the real Nick, the real me, who had been broken long ago and never really fixed. I didn't want anyone to be able to see me like that again; I didn't want anyone to see me.

And then Grissom and Catherine and Warrick and Sara, Greg and Hodges and Ecklie and Archie, Mom and Dad, everyone else in the lab. . .they all saw me. They all watched me as I was trapped in that coffin, trying to resist the urge to blow my fucking brains out. Every single one of them watched me and saw me, and in the space of 24 hours my privacy was gone, shattered, as if it had never existed in the first place. Every single one of them saw me as me, not the fake Nick but the real Nick: damaged.

VII.

Both Catherine and Grissom suggested that I see a therapist for a while about what happened. Catherine suggested it while I was still in the hospital, bringing it up out of the blue when we weren't really talking about anything at all. She didn't draw out the conversation, didn't spend hours harping on the subject, but she did make it obvious that she thought it'd be a good idea. I think she, even more than the others, would be especially relieved if I sought help; she mentioned that this wasn't the only incident I hadn't dealt with in my past, and that seeking some help would be the smart course of action.

Grissom's approach, of course, wasn't remotely like Catherine's. He didn't bring it up at all, not until my first week back at work. I was in a bad mood about something and I blew up a little at Jacqui. . . I didn't mean to, really, but I hadn't slept much and I was irritated (I apologized later). Grissom happened to overhear me yelling and he called me into his office to "check in on how the case was going". We sat in silence for a long time before he began talking about some rare spider, some entomological wonder, that had these fascinating panic responses. I started to tune out a little, so I missed exactly how the metaphor worked, but by the end of it I was the spider, and the spider might want to think about seeing a professional for psychiatric help. Every time I see Grissom now, I think to myself 'I am the spider', and it makes me laugh a little in my head. That alone makes me think Grissom and Catherine are probably right about seeing the shrink.

It would be a good idea to see a shrink, to talk about what's happened. It probably would be the best choice for me to seek out help. I know all this, I even agreed with them when they told me, but I still haven't called anyone yet and I don't think I mean to. I just can't stand the idea of talking about it anymore, of actually trying to explain what being in that box was like.

They had a picture of me on the news for a while; it was pretty sensational stuff, even if you didn't fudge the facts. They called me the 'cop who was buried alive': I guess explaining what exactly a crime scene investigator was might take up more than the 30 seconds you had before commercial break. Every now and then, I'd be walking outside and people would recognize me on the street, would actually point out and whisper, "Look, it's that guy". And every time I ever seriously thought about picking up the phone to call any shrink, I'd picture those strangers' faces in my head, pointing their fingers at me. I'd visualize my dad as he cried over me in the hospital, my co-workers, who couldn't look me in the eyes anymore if they passed by me in the lab. I'd see Catherine sobbing behind one hand and Warrick needing to be forgiven, and I could picture every one of them watching me break down when I was trapped in there, watching me fall apart again and again. I could imagine them all seeing me and knowing and I just couldn't pick up that phone, couldn't call someone to make an appointment to talk about it all over again. I didn't want anyone else to know; I still don't want anyone else to know. I'm trying to pick up the pieces, trying to keep from feeling so exposed. Because that's how I feel whenever I think of them all watching me in that coffin: I feel exposed, and I feel dirty, and ashamed of how they all know.

That's been pretty hard to deal with. I thought that would be the worst of it all. But I know now that I was wrong. There's something else I have to handle, something's that worse than even this.


	4. The Choice

VIII.

I got a month paid leave to recuperate, to get better soon, whatever that means. I spent some of that time watching TV, or reading about birds, or fighting back nightmares, but mostly what I did that month was take the time to reflect on what a seriously fucked up life I've had. I even made a list, at least, a mental one, of the chronology of shit that's gone wrong in my 38 years spent on Earth.

Age 9-The Babysitter

Age 33-Held at gunpoint for the first time; this time by Mrs. Hendler

Age 33-Framed for the murder of Kristi Hopkins, my sort of hooker girlfriend.

Age 34-Pushed out a second story window by Nigel Crane.

Age 34-Stalked by Nigel Crane. Held at gunpoint again. Had a man dead in my living room.

Age 38-Held at multiple gunpoint by a bunch of pissed off Mexicans in a bar. Thinking I'm running low on my luck here.

Age 38- Kidnapped, buried alive, slowly eaten by fire ants, nearly suffocated, and nearly blown up.

Age 38-Aftermath.

Ultimately, I've concluded that my 30's have not been good years.

I start to worry that I'm feeling sorry for myself, that I'm spending too much time whining when I shouldn't be thinking about me at all. After all, there are other cases, other victims, other problems. There are other people who've had a lot more happen to them than me. Still, I think of my mental list and I can't help but think, "God, I've gone through a lot of shit".

The thing is, though, that I've been depressed before. Serious, clinical depression, not just being upset that the cute girl at the lab didn't want to go out to dinner, but honestly depressed, wondering what's the point in life. And it's always been hard but I guess I've gotten through everything; I've always managed to rebuild, always turned the incidents of my life into things that make a person. I've always moved on; I've been able to not take it with me. I've had people. . .take advantage of me, I've had people watch me. I've had people put a gun to my head.

But I've never been the one to do it. I've never held that gun myself.

In all that time of moving on through depression, in all that time of contemplating suicide, I never understood how easy it would be. I never put a gun to the bottom of my chin to blow my brains out.

And now I have. I put that gun to my chin. I had my finger on the trigger. And if the others had just been a couple of minutes later, I know I would have done it. I would have squeezed, and I would have died.

When I was finally out of the coffin, finally pulled through by that crane to land on hard earth, I couldn't do much of anything but hold on to the ground and shake and shake. It took me a few minutes to realize that I was free. It took me a lot longer to accept that possibility as fact. I kept moving my fingers and touching the ground, trying to reassure myself that this wasn't some hallucination, that this wasn't another nightmare. I tried to convince myself that I was really free. But it didn't happen for awhile and a part of me believed that I was still in the box, or worse, I had pulled the trigger. I had committed suicide and I was dead and this, this was Hell.

Once I finally began to believe that I was alive and that I was safe, I started working towards getting better. I tried to stop crying and to fight the nightmares and to not take it with me. And it was hard, God, was it hard, but I believed that after the first few weeks were over, and after the first day back at work, I would be on the road to recovery. I would go back to feeling normal again.

I was wrong.

Every night for the last week I've sat in this same place on the couch, eyes looking but never seeing, hand on my gun, always on the gun. Sometimes, I close my eyes and put the gun to my head and think how close I was before, how unbelievably close I was before, to ending it all, to stopping it all. I think of how close I am now, how easy it would be.

Because I'm sick of the aftermath, I'm sick of all this shit. I'm sick of the nightmares and the fear; I'm sick of people feeling sorry for me. I'm sick of telling Warrick it's not his fault, sick of telling Catherine not to cry. I'm sick of pretending and I'm sick of dealing. I'm sick of holding this gun and knowing just how simply I could end it all. I'm sick of trying to decide if surviving is really worth this living. I'm sick of trying to decide if I want to be here at all.

Sometimes I wake up and I'm so infinitely grateful to all my friends who tried to find me, to everyone who put in so much effort. Catherine literally got a million dollars for me; I mean, how do you top that? Sometimes I am so grateful for what they did to get me back alive.

And other times I think, God, why did you work so fucking hard? Why did you work to get me back, if this is the kind of life I have to live? And sometimes I wake up and feel regret that they found me. Sometimes I wake up and wish that I had pulled that trigger.

There are days that I am terrified that I'll really use this gun. Today isn't that day; I've already decided not to use it. But I don't know how I'll feel about tomorrow or the next. Some days I'm so terrified because I know that I could do it.

But other days I'm just as terrified because I think that maybe I won't do it at all. I think I could pull this trigger but I won't, because it would be a betrayal. It would hurt the ones I loved, the ones who sacrificed for me. I think I could pick up this gun but maybe I won't ever be willing to betray my friends.

And then I'll maybe stay this way forever, fighting back nightmares and tears. Maybe I'll be this way always, having to hold a gun to remind myself that I'm alive.

I can't decide what I want to do but I know I'll have to make a choice eventually. I have to figure out whether this life is really worth living or not. And some days when I work on a case, or when Greg makes another stupid joke, or when Sara and I just talk about whatever's going on, I think that life might be worth it, that I might be okay with where I am. But there are so many other times when I wonder, when I think maybe I would have been better off dead. I think that maybe once your buried, you are never supposed to come out alive. I think maybe once you've got the gun, you're only meant to pull the trigger.

And I sit here on this couch, eyes closed, trying to think. And I know that the worst part of surviving is the choice that I have to make.

fin.


End file.
